Tuesday, 23 August 2016

Colonial Wars - British Army Started

Hi Folks

Following 2 weeks of idleness in the Portuguese sun I am slowly getting back in the groove.

Whilst away Postie delivered a rather interesting parcel. The Warlord Games Plastic Army starter set for the British. I sourced this on ebay for 55 GB pounds ( they sell for 75 pounds on the official site).

These are of course for my Zulu Wars project...to read the Zulu Army project click here

The box contains 60 British Infantry, 20 NNC Natives, a couple of mounted officers and a gatling gun with three crew. So each figure works out at about 60p. Remember we are trying to build these armies on a budget

The Natives Sprue is virtually identical to the standard zulu sprues, with the noticeable differences being the heads are adorned with bandanas (to be painted red), and the weapons include a quiver of javelins.

To be blunt I was rather disappointed when I examined the British Infantry sprues - each sprue carries four bodies. Rather annoyingly two of these are kneeling. I do like different poses on my figures but to have half a core set in this pose is just wrong. There appears to be four different rifle positions and a number of head options. So we can deliver some variety.

The horse officers (Pulleine & Melville) come from Warlords alliance with Empress and their is a rather useful gatling gun witrh three crew to round things off

I'll begin assembling the plastics in the coming days and share how these differ to the Black Tree Brits I bought a few weeks back, however a quick examination by eye suggests that these guys might be 1mm taller and a bit chunkier but they will add some variety to the plastic set. Furthermore all the Black Tree ones are standing up !

So in total I have around 100 British Infantry. These will be assembled into 16 figure companies although I'll have some flexibility to reduce/increase these to twelves/sixteens by using a number of 2 x 2 bases.

I feel the same about Warlord's British infantry for Zulu-Wars.May I suggest Perry's Sudan British Infantry Box? Their uniforms are almost identical to the Zulu-Wars and I doubt anyone can spot the difference on a gaming table!They offer a much better variety of poses - and even a dog! ;-)